


Just a casual, temporary, thing

by framboise



Series: An Education [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Academia, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Caretaking, Communication, Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jaime is Sansa's wingman, Kink Negotiation, Light Dom/sub, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Multiple, Past Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark - Freeform, Praise Kink, Protectiveness, Relationship Negotiation, Romance, Seduction, Sugar Daddy, Teacher-Student Relationship, and Sansa thinks her new thing with Petyr is casual until she realises it definitely isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-31 06:45:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13969572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: "Tell me, Sansa," Petyr asks, crowding her up against the darkened stacks, "have you ever had sex in a library?""No," she says, breath hitching, her hands clutching the back of his blazer as he presses his body against hers."Would you like to, darling?" he murmurs in her ear.She nods and he breathes a laugh. "You'd have to be very quiet though," he says, and she can feel the shape of his smile as he kisses her. "Do you think you can do that, be a good girl for me?"





	Just a casual, temporary, thing

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Petyr/Sansa sequel to my Jaime/Sansa fic [Rightly, wrongly, here we are](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13503132). It might be a good idea to read that fic first but you'll still be able to follow this if you haven't. 
> 
> The backstory: Sansa and her half-brother Jon, who is away with the Night's Watch, are the only remaining Starks after a house fire took the rest of their family when they were teenagers. In the last story Sansa pursued Jaime, her undergraduate classics professor, for a one night stand in which she lost her virginity to him, and the two have remained platonic friends since.
> 
> and if you want visuals, I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/171995009782/in-which-sansa-thinks-her-new-thing-with-petyr-is)

 

 

"And how is my favourite ex-virgin?" Jaime drawls into his bluetooth headset as he completes his morning crossword - in pen, on the back of the actual newspaper, because he's not a philistine.

"How is my favourite lecherous old man?" Sansa replies and he hears the honk of a bus passing from her end of the phone.

"Touché. And I'm fabulous, thank you. And yourself?"

"A little...frustrated, to be honest."

"Oh, really?" he says, with a pleased smile. "I'm hard to live up to aren't I, Miss Stark."

"Hardly," she scoffs. "It's more that the few encounters I've had with boys my age recently have been–"

"-unsatisfactory? Fumbling? All deathgrip handjobs and thirty seconds of poking at your clitoris like it's a light-switch?"

"I see you've slept with the same men," she says, and he laughs and then coughs.

"I don't swing the other way, I'm afraid."

"Neither do I-"

"-shame-"

"-it would be easier if I did, and did you just say _shame?_   You're such a pervert."

"You say that like it's a surprise."

She huffs a laugh. "It's good to speak to you," she says and he can hear her smile.

"I'm always here if you want to talk. I know our deal was for one night of carnal relations-"

"- _carnal relations_ -" she repeats and he can picture her eye-roll.

"-but I like you, Sansa, I'd be happy to be your friend. Or your wingman."

"Oh," she says, "now, that's a thought."

"It is, isn't it," he says, as he finishes the last crossword clue and marks the whole thing with a cross, dropping the paper in the bin next to his desk and picking up his e-cig.

"Do you have any suitors in mind?"

Jaime leans back in his chair and blows a perfect ring of smoke towards the ceiling of his office. "An older man, naturally-"

"Naturally," she says and her voice jogs as she walks up a flight of stairs.

"-handsome, charming, unmarried?"

"Well, yes, Jaime, I'm not interested in being a home-wrecker."

"And a professor?"

Silence.

"Now, I could have sworn that we decided you weren't into teacher-student roleplay."

"We did."

"But you've changed your mind?"

"I'm not into roleplay, I'm just into professors, that's all. The confidence, the intelligence-"

"-being told you're a naughty girl and then spanked across a desk in their private office?"

"You know I'm into that," she says.

"I know, punishment isn't your thing," he says, shifting in his seat.

"Are you getting off to this conversation?" she asks suspiciously.

"Of course not," he says, taking his hand back from his crotch where he had been absentmindedly pressing his palm against the beginnings of an erection.

"Right," she says sarcastically. "I'll have to leave you now anyway, I've got to get to class. But think on it, OK?"

"I'll make a list for you, no beer bellies and no terrible hygiene, to start with."

"You do that. I know you professors have a lot of free time on your hands this time of year."

He laughs, staring at the mound of syllabi and registration lists on his desk, all the detritus of the first weeks of a new academic year. "How are your first few weeks as a masters student in comparative lit going? Not finding it too difficult?"

"Of course not."

"Good girl," he says, mouth curling into a smirk.

" _Jaime_ ," she replies but he can hear the flustered note in her voice.

"Speak soon," he says blithely and ends the call.

It's been years since he's been someone's wingman, not since he and his siblings were undergrads and he was trying to set Tyrion up with various nubile co-eds, and he's quite looking forward to the challenge. Anything to distract himself from thinking about his disastrous weekend visiting Brienne, or his dear departed sister who he dreamed of again last night in lurid colour.

He leaves his office to go on a hunt for mid-morning coffee in the humanities common room and idly peruses the members of staff who are crowding around the table where someone has brought in free teacake that looks like a block of shit - but free cake is free cake, he supposes.

It's a shame Sansa doesn't like women, he thinks, as he passes Melisandre looking positively vampish in her newest red dress, her knowing eyes giving him a twice-over. Jaime is man enough to know that a woman like Melisandre would eat him alive, he'll happily stick to his mutually satisfactory one-night stands with women he isn't likely to see again.

There's Stannis Baratheon, he thinks, as the brooding man stalks out of the room, but he knows that Sansa is looking for something fun, easy, and Professor Baratheon, with all his hang-ups, is more of a long-term project.

Or there's the young pretender Harrold Hardyng – but even though he's probably even more handsome than Jaime, he's only a few years older than Sansa, and more importantly, he's a total twat, Jaime thinks as he overhears the man in question moaning about having to do a session on Feminist Theory for his intro class this year.

When the coffee machine is finally clear, Jaime makes himself an atrocious cappuccino and leans against the counter, scanning the crowd, eyes falling on the newest arrival to the room. Oh, he thinks, with an inward groan, really? But as he scrolls down his mental list of available professors and TAs, he realises that the man who is making his way over to Jaime might be just what Sansa is looking for.

"Hello, Professor Baelish, long time, no see."

"Jaime," the other man says with a tilt of his head.

"And how was your exile to Vale University."

"Exile?" Petyr says, putting a hand in the pocket of his perfectly tailored trousers. He's always been a stylish little shit, has Petyr. "I thought it was a promotion."

"Then why return to King's Landing?"

"A better position opened up." He shrugs his shoulders.

"It was the weather, wasn't it."

"Well, that helps, but being the head of economics at King's Landing was the real draw," Petyr says, reaching to make a black coffee. "You looked at me strangely when I walked in," he adds, annoyingly observant as ever, without even deigning to turn his comment into a question.

"I was pondering something. Are you single at the moment?"

Petyr raises an eyebrow.

"Not for me," Jaime says.

"Well, then who for?"

"No one, I was only wondering."

Petyr stares at Jaime and sips his coffee.

"Really," Jaime insists.

"OK then," Petyr says. "But I am, single, that is."

"Well, that's good to know."

"It is, isn't it." Petyr says with that annoying grin of his.

The only reason why Jaime is considering Petyr for Sansa is that he was aware of Petyr's reputation amongst the womenfolk of King's Landing back when they were both masters students and before Petyr became a mostly boring bachelor, that of being charming and attentive, if a little intense. Also, perhaps more importantly, some years ago his and Jaime's hotel rooms had shared a wall at a particularly raucous conference in Essos, and Jaime had overheard in vivid detail just the kind of sex Petyr had been into, the kind that Sansa would definitely be into too, with lots of praise and gentle teasing. Although if Jaime could go back and erase that night - and the knowledge he now has of what Petyr sounds like when he's coming – he would be immensely happy to do so.

 

**

 

Should it be embarrassing to hit up one of your ex-lovers for suggestions for your next lover? If it is, then Sansa is shameless. When she was younger, and easily mortified, she would have hated the phrase, _life's too short to be embarrassed_ , but since she lost her family, and since she decided last year to brazenly approach Jaime to take her virginity, and followed that with several one-night stands this summer when she was staying in Oldtown to use their research library, she's done her best to do away with the concept of shame.

Now she needs to combine that resolution with making better choices as well - hence asking Jaime if he knows any older men, because her brief experience with men her age has been a round disappointment and left her feeling, if she's honest, hollow and even more alone.

When she left Jaime's flat after their night together she remembers that she had felt hopeful, if a little melancholy - but then every mood of hers has been touched by melancholy since the accident – and determined that when she had graduated and had the free time to date, she would concentrate on older men. But that was easier said than done, because she didn't tend to hang out in the same places they did, and any older men that did approach her elsewhere tended to be of the sleazy and/or creepy persuasion.

She's not looking for anything serious, she and her last therapist both decided that it's perfectly normal to be twenty-one and not want a long-term relationship, even without her extra raging commitment issues. She just wants to have fun with someone who knows what they're doing, and how hard can that be?

 _Very_ , she mouths at her reflection the evening after her call with Jaime, as her phone hums with notifications for a dating app she's going to delete the minute she's finished brushing her teeth.

When she has, she tucks herself up in bed with tea, radio blaring to block out the strange quietness of her new graduate lodgings, a block of studios on the edge of the university park peopled by quiet international students. She likes living alone because she doesn't have to modify her moods to suit others, to come up with explanations for why she sometimes disappears for the weekend into her bedroom – or has weeks where she doesn't do anything except work, wash her hair and cook anything beyond prepackaged salads included - beyond the ever-present reason that she is still grieving, that she will always grieve.

 _How's the girlfriend_ , she texts Jon, feeling a formless flutter of anxiety that tea and classical music won't fix but some light teasing of her half-brother might.

 _What girlfriend_ , he texts back.

_I'm friends with you on facebook...I know there's a girlfriend_

_You know what they say...about assumptions..._

_Don't mock my use of ellipses_

_...sorry. lol_

_Also, top tip, if you *do* have a girlfriend, try not using 'lol' in text conversation, it makes you sound like a teenage boy_

_No need, she uses more lols than me_

_Ha! I knew you had a girlfriend_

_Oi._ Sansa cackles as she imagines the particular frown Jon makes when he feels "betrayed". _But yeah, busted_

_Aw, young love_

_I'm two years older than you_

_Semantics_

_Ooh, big words from the masters student. Anyway, how's your love life? (can't believe I'm asking that, please please don't give me any details)_

_Not good_

_Oh? You want to talk about it?_

Sansa can feel her face turn fond. When she had told Jon in advance about her plans to sleep with Jaime he had been endearingly supportive, after the requisite oh-my-god-he's-your-professor-and-he's-so-old freakout. _Dry spell, but I've put Professor Lannister on the case as my wingman_ , she texts. _  
_

_Oh god. I retract that question_

_You don't know any handsome older men do you?_

_Sansaaaa_ _  
_

_What, it was worth a go, I know things are a total sausage fest with the Night's Watch_

_I'm going to ignore that description. And none of them are good enough for my sister - in a totally non-patronising way, I promise_

_Alright, I believe you. Is that why your girlfriend's with you then, slim options?_

_Cheeky_

_Always_

_Sleep well, Sans, and good luck with your search for wrinkly dick_

_OH MY GOD, JONATHAN_

_lol lol lol_

_Sleep well to you too. I hope your girlfriend likes your puerile humour_

_Says the girl who uses the phrase "sausage fest"_

Mood successfully lightened, Sansa turns off the light and the radio and settles down to sleep, lazily imagining a future encounter with said mythical handsome older man. Maybe he'll have a bathtub and she can use it after they've slept together, she thinks, missing having a bath of her own dearly, and then inwardly castigates herself – _a bathtub_ , that's how shallow her expectations are. Jaime better be a miracle-worker.

 

**

 

There's drinks tonight for the humanities department and since graduate students are invited too, it's the perfect opportunity to introduce Sansa to Petyr. And if Jaime is lucky, he'll be able to hunt down his own partner for the night too.

He listens idly to what the new classics hire, a total bore whose name momentarily escapes him, has to say and nods at intervals, searching the crowd for either of his two lovebirds, but it's not until he's on his third glass of horrendously bad wine that Sansa approaches him, looking harried but gorgeous as ever, and he feels that usual minor twinge of regret that they ended things after only one night.

"Sansa, so I think I've found a man for you and he's perfect," he says.

"Oh, Jaime," she says, touching his arm. "I'm so sorry, but my friend is having a bit of a crisis and I need to go and help her."

"You go, I'll give him your number, get him to text you," Jaime says, spying the man in question glancing over at the two of them, his eyes looking Sansa up and down.

"You're a star," she says, ponytail bouncing perkily as she leaves in a hurry.

Petyr extricates himself from his conversation with the pro-vice-chancellor and makes his way over to Jaime.

"Who was that?" he asks.

"Sansa Stark?"

"Stark?" Petyr says, looking startled.

"You know her?"

"I knew her mother."

"Biblically?"

Petyr pauses.

Oh, shit. "This isn't one of those moments when you realise you've got a long-lost daughter, is it?"

Petyr gives him a withering look.

"Well, that's good, because she's the girl I wanted to set you up with."

"Really?"

"No admonishments not to pimp you out, no hesitation?"

Petyr is still glancing over at the door that Sansa left from and Jaime is inwardly rubbing his hands together gleefully. He's the best wingman ever.

"You're very smug, Jaime," Petyr remarks, checking his watch – and does an academic really need such a flashy watch?

"What, I'm just smiling at this wine, it's good wine."

"Is it. So do you have her number then, or are we to arrange a date telepathically."

"I do," Jaime replies, sipping his wine and delighting in how impatient Petyr looks.

"And?"

He reads it out and watches Petyr's perfectly manicured hands fly over his phone. Then he checks his watch again. "Well, I better be off-"

"-wait," Jaime says, stopping him with his hand on his shoulder. "You'll be nice to her, won't you," he says, feeling an uncomfortable déjà vu of the conversation Tyrion had with him when Jaime was thinking about accepting Sansa's advances.

"Nice," Petyr repeats.

"You know, repeating everything someone says is hardly the hallmark of good rhetoric. And yes, _nice_ , she's had a tough time."

"I'm well aware of what happened with the Starks," he says and then tilts his head. "You're very protective of her."

"Jealous? We had a thing, a one-night thing, a gentlemen never shares details etcetera etcetera, and we're friends, obviously, with me trying to get her a date." He turns more serious. "She puts on a tough front, and she's independent and accomplished and everything, but she's delicate underneath, she needs to be looked after."

"Alright," Petyr says, without his usual sneer. "Thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome. Now never ever tell me any details of your time together. Staying in a hotel room next to yours at that conference was bad enough."

Petyr tilts his head back, looking proud. "Oh, you heard that, did you."

"Did you know I was next door?" Jaime asks, eyes narrowing.

Petyr scoffs. "Hardly, I was a little too busy with my companion that evening."

"A redhead, was she?"

"I don't recall."

"Liar."

"We all have preferences, Jaime," Petyr says, a little too knowingly, and before Jaime can wonder what exactly Petyr knows about Jaime's past, the other man makes his excuses and leaves.

Well, Jaime thinks, turning to look for more wine, he's done his bit now, it's up to them to do the rest, and he lets his attention be drawn to the visiting lecturer he's had his eye on for the last week, a stunning brunette with curves to die for. Brienne is still the only blonde he's ever even kissed since his sister died, and that's fine, it's not avoidance, it's just being sensible.

 

**

 

Jaime texts her a name and a number, and says that Professor Baelish is going to ask her out. Sansa is still trying to ferry various things - tissues, ice cream, a fuzzy jumper - to Margaery who is curled up on her bathroom floor in her large King's Landing flat looking very sorry for herself. She and Margaery were acquaintances at best at school but they were both in Oldtown this summer and Sansa found herself reaching out for a coffee that turned into many coffees and drinks and dinners at Margaery's gorgeous family flat there. It's been years since Sansa had something resembling a friend and she's trying to do her best with it, to be vulnerable and available, she thinks, using words her old therapist used to repeat ad nauseam. Hence her hurrying to help Margaery with a being-dumped emergency tonight.

"Apparently I'm being asked on a date soon, by a handsome older man," Sansa announces, sitting herself down on the closed toilet lid. She knows that Margaery loves a bit of gossip.

"Oh?" Margaery says, perking up. "Wait, how do you know in advance?"

"I may have asked Jaime to set me up with another professor."

"Sansa! That's shameless, you go, girl." Margaery drags herself up to lean against the side of the bath. "So, what's his name?"

"Petyr Baelish," Sansa says and then frowns. "I've heard his name before actually. Wait, I think he was one of mum's friends at uni."

"Friends or _friends_ ," Margaery says, looking delighted at the distraction from her own heartbreak.

"Well, my mother insisted she was a virgin when she met my father, so-"

Sansa doesn't talk about her family much, she's found that other people get annoyingly voyeuristic about it, searching her face for signs of tragedy.

"Let's google him," Margaery says. "Oh, nice," she adds, once she's found him, "look-" she hands over her phone.

"Not bad," Sansa says. "He's the head of the economics department apparently."

"He'll be rich then."

Sansa shrugs, handing back the phone, "I don't really care, I'm just looking for some uncomplicated fun. It's not like we'll be together long enough for anything like that, and anyway, I don't like being bought."

"Spoilsport." Margaery sighs and then blows her nose loudly on a tissue. "You know, this news has really cheered me up, Sansa. I like the idea that at least one of us is going to be getting some satisfying sex."

"Margaery, you're a total catch and you know it. Now, pick up the ice cream and let's move out of your bathroom," she says and then leans over and pokes Margaery's arm annoyingly until the other woman agrees.

 

Petyr texts her when she's on the bus home from Margaery's. He apologises that Jaime didn't actually tell him much about her, and asks her if she wants to go for dinner this weekend at a little bistro near the harbour to rectify the situation. She appreciates his straightforwardness, his good grammar, and his quick responses to her answers.

And if she looks him up on youtube the day of the date and gets distracted from doing her makeup by that one video where he's giving a lecture with a little smug smile in the corner of his mouth, and wearing a smart tweed jacket with elbow patches, then so what. She always likes to do her homework, to be prepared, that's all.

Once they've sat down at their table, and after Petyr has kissed her on the cheek in greeting, complimented her sundress with just the right amount of leer, and held her chair out like a gentlemen, she decides to get the awkwardness out of the way first.

"So I remember my mother talking about you actually, in her uni stories."

"Oh, yes?" he says, as the waiter pours him a little of the wine for him to taste. "That's fine," he tells the waiter and then turns his attention back to Sansa. "I was familiar with your surname of course, but a little surprised that _you_ were Sansa Stark. The last time I heard about you, you were only a baby, if that's not horrendously odd to say," he says and she laughs. "I didn't keep up with your mother much, but I'm glad she mentioned me."

"She had photos too, of her uni days, you were probably in them, I can't remember."

"I think that's for the best," he says. "Us men look better with age, I suspect," he says, his eyes glinting.

"Jaime told you I was looking for an older man, then," she says brazenly after taking a large sip of the wine.

"Not exactly, but I inferred. It's not out of the ordinary. Boys your age-" he huffs a laugh.

"Don't I know it," she says, and flicks her hair over her shoulder, pleased by the way his eyes darken. She's pleased too that they've touched on her family without him using the phrase "I'm sorry for your loss", or "I can't imagine what that feels like". She's looking for something fun, uncomplicated, and if him knowing her background means he also knows what _not_ to talk about, then that's all the better.

"Hmm, and now we have to sit through a whole dinner. We should have started with a lighter choice of conversation, perhaps, rather than sex," he says, and she shifts in her seat. "Have you seen any good films recently?" he asks mirthfully.

"Films, hmm," she says, biting her lip and watching the way his eyes slide to her mouth. This is going to be fun, she thinks with a pleased little shiver.

 

**

 

Sansa is charming and gorgeous and so much _more_ than her mother. She's not a cock-tease like Catelyn either, Petyr thinks darkly, he can tell that she wants him and it thrills him. Still, he's honest when he tells her that he enjoyed dinner, as he drives her back to his house near the university, trying to drag his eyes away from the bare legs revealed by the skirt of her sundress which is sliding up against the leather seat, or the sight of a particular shade of red that he's been dreaming of for many years. He's not just in this for sex, not at all, and even a couple of hours with her makes him certain that he wants far more.

It's clear that she's shy of commitment, of being vulnerable, and with good reason after losing everyone she did. But Petyr knows that if he's consistent, if he doesn't push, but is always available, if he gives her everything she doesn't yet quite know she needs, then he has a chance of this being something more serious than a short fling.

Is it underhanded not to tell her of his intentions? He doesn't think so, he's not doing anything people don't do regularly when one person is keener than the other to begin with.

He opens the car door for her and guides her up the steps to his house with a hand on her lower back, pleased that she already looks impressed by the outside of the building. Once inside, he offers to take her cardigan, if only for an excuse to touch her bare shoulders and make her shiver.

"A drink? Or shall we move straight to the main event?" he asks her, turning her around and nudging her closer to him, watching her breath hitch. She bites her lip again and he tugs it away from her teeth with his thumb and then rubs it slowly.

"Bedroom," she says quickly and he kisses her, pulling her towards him with a hand behind her neck, her soft hair tickling the back of it. She tastes sweet, with a nervous, sour undertaste, and he licks at her tongue and then the roof of her mouth and her hands clutch the back of his jacket.

"Bedroom," he repeats, pulling back and leading her by the hand through the hallway and upstairs. Once he has her inside his room, he pushes her against the closed door and kisses her again, hooking an arm around her waist, pressing his hips against hers as she melts and makes little noises into his mouth.

He tugs off his jacket and toes off his shoes and then kneels before her, looking up at her flushed face, smirking as he runs his hands up her legs and under the skirt of her dress. Her knickers are damp and he presses his face against them, breathing in her smell as she squirms above him, and then he pulls them down and puts his mouth to her cunt, shouldering her thighs apart, grunting when she tugs at his hair, angling his mouth so he can get his tongue right inside of her, sucking at her clit until she moans. He works her until she comes and her legs stutter around his shoulders, and then he leads her over to his bed and she falls back on it with a huff, blowing her hair out of her face.

"Good?" he asks, as he stands over her and unbuttons his shirt.

"So good," she says with a smile and a gorgeous blush.

She looks perfect in his bed, lips bruised with his kisses, eyes half-lidded, and he'll do everything in his power to make sure that she is a permanent fixture.

Her eyes roam his newly bared chest and when he undoes his belt he notices her breath hitch at the sound. Interesting, he thinks, his mind making plans for future debauchments. When he's down to his boxers, he picks up her feet one by one to take off her shoes, liking the way the movement makes her dress slide up and bare her pink cunt to him, and then he kneels over her and unbuttons her dress, slowly, from the top, as her chest heaves with breath and she wriggles a little on the bed, hands clutching at the sheets.

She's not wearing a bra, which he knew from the moment he greeted her tonight, her nipples poking through the yellow fabric of her dress, and once he's unbuttoned her all the way down, he parts her dress and stares at her. "Perfect, Sansa," he says, noticing her immediate response to the praise. "Gorgeous," he says, brushing a thumb across her hardening nipple, the perfect pink shade of it. He bends over to fit his mouth to her left nipple, while his thumb and finger roll the right, and she whines and tries to pull his body against hers, fingers scrabbling at the waistband of his boxers.

" _Petyr_ ," she says and his hips pulse. He likes the sound of her saying his name, he's going to enjoy getting her to say it again and again.

He cups her mound, feels the heat of it, and then slides two of his fingers inside. She's plush and hot and tight, and he tells her that. She throws her forearm across her eyes, overwhelmed, moaning, and he gently pulls it back. "I like to see your face, don't hide it," he says.

She rests her arms by her sides and pants.

"Good girl," he says, and she lets out an honest-to-god squeak. _Jackpot_ , he thinks.

He takes off his boxers but stays kneeling over her, stroking his cock, watching her look at it, nudging the head of it against her wet cunt for just a moment.

"Please," she whines.

He leans over to grab a condom and then works it on. "How do you like to do this?" he asks.

"I don't care, just, please," she says, needy and overwhelmed. "I haven't done this enough, I don't know-" she says.

"That's alright, darling," he says, watching her eyes flutter. He pulls her thighs apart, fits the head of his cock in place, sets his hands to the bends of her knees, and thrusts inside with one smooth stroke, groaning at the tight fit. "Fuck," he mutters, and then he kisses her, drinking in her moans as he sets up a slow pace, grinding at the end of each thrust to work her clit, moving one hand to clutch at the back of her neck, sucking at her lips as she holds onto his back tightly, as she lifts her hips up to meet his.

"Good girl," he says. "Perfect, Sansa," and she whines and flutters around him as she comes. Five more thrusts have him coming too, muffling the sound in her mouth, pressing himself deep and picturing what it would be like to come inside her without the condom, what his cum would look like dripping out of her pretty little pussy.

He extricates himself, ties off the condom, and lies on his back, coaxing her to lie over him, her head resting on his chest as his fingers comb gently through her hair. She tilts her head to the side and looks up at him, and he feels caught by her blue eyes. "Good?" he asks again.

"Outstanding, professor," she says impishly and he laughs and bends to kiss her head.

"What a cheeky thing you are," he murmurs and she smiles bashfully, shivering slightly.

 _Perfect_ , he thinks.

 

**

 

Sansa laughs the next morning when she sees his amazing bathtub, with its jacuzzi jets and room enough for two.

"Something funny?" he asks, as he moves around the bathroom looking for bath oil while the tub fills.

"It's nothing," she says, holding his shirt around her nakedness, still a little shy to stand around nude. "It's just, when I was thinking about my next...partner, I was hoping that they would have a nice bath because I've missed having one. And then I had to tell myself off for dreaming wistfully about baths, as if my expectations were that low," she says, feeling like she's doing a bad job of explaining. "After last night I wouldn't have cared if you didn't even have a shower," she says as he comes close and cups his hands around her face, looking at her fondly. "I'm sorry," she says, "I have a tendency to babble when I'm nervous."

He kisses her, softly, teasingly. "Is it redundant if I say I find it charming?" he asks, with that ever-present smirk of his.

"Nope, compliments are always welcome."

"Noted," he says, and then he slides his shirt from her, eyes darkening as she's revealed to him.

She slips into the hot bath with a groan and he slides behind her, his hands roaming over her skin, working her up almost instantly. Her body is pleasantly sore from last night, and this morning, and she rests her head against his shoulder as he moulds his hands around her breasts.

He plods kisses down her neck and shoulder. "Now, I know the idea of this was a one-night thing," he says, as she stretches her legs out in the water, "but it feels silly to limit it to just one. We're both adults, aren't we, sensible people." He sucks at a point just behind her ear that makes her squirm. "What do you think, hmm?" he asks.

"Um," she says, as one of his hands moves to cup her mound. What she's thinking is that Jaime Lannister is a goddamn miracle-worker. "Yes," she says.

"Yes to doing this again?"

"Yes," she moans as he rubs her cunt softly with the pad of one finger. A fling doesn't have to be just one night, it can be a few weeks, even a month at most, she reasons inwardly, putting her hand over his and rocking her hips up, and she can feel the shape of his smile against her neck.

They don't fuck in the bath, which is good because it requires more coordination than Sansa thinks she has, her limbs worn out and woozy from so many orgasms. Instead, he sits himself against the headboard of his bed and has her sit in his lap, grinding slowly, whining as he tells her how good she is for him, how perfect. And if he already knows how to press her buttons so well, then how overwhelming is it going to be in a week's time, how is she going to survive such an onslaught, she thinks, almost hysterically.

He drives her back to her studio, her eyes barely moving from the sight of his hands on the steering wheel of his fancy sports car.

"Do you own driving gloves?" she asks suddenly.

He glances over at her, a quizzical smile on his face. Even his little beard and moustache work for him, placing him just the right side, or maybe actually the wrong side, of sleazy. "You'd like to see me in leather gloves?" he asks.

"No," she says, flustered, "I was just wondering."

"We never did finish that conversation about what you liked," he says.

"Mmm," she hums noncommittally.

"If you don't tell me, I'll have to guess."

"You've done a good job of it so far," she says with a shy laugh.

He smiles smugly. "Think on it," he says. "Text me if you have any inspiration. If this is fun, let's have fun, let's do everything you can think of."

"That's very open-ended. What makes you think you'd like the same things I might like."

"Try me," he says.

"Fine, but same with you, let's do things you like too."

"Oh, we will," he says, turning into her road, "don't you worry about that, darling."

He gets out of the car to open her door before she can tell him not to, and escorts her to her front door, kissing her lightly and patting her bum in a way she's totally into when he leaves her with a smirk to saunter back to his car.

When she's inside, and sitting at her kitchen table for one, she slides her phone off silent.

 _Amazing_ , she texts back Margaery, who has sent her a steady stream of nosy texts. _He knew what he was doing, and then some_.

 _GET IT_ , Margaery texts back.

 _Home now_ , Sansa then texts Jon, who she told about her date in advance just like she always does, out of security and the opportunity to tease him.

 _Great_ , Jon replies a while later, as Sansa is making herself the second breakfast she needs after the exercise of this morning, and she smiles at the thought of Jon's bemused smile.

She spends the rest of the weekend working on her first essay of the semester for her course on Latin American women's writing, as ever enjoying the way that studying other languages allows her mind to drift free of its thoughts and from her ever-present loneliness.

Petyr texts her bright and early on Monday morning, after she's just returned from her first jog of many months.

 _So, any thoughts?_ he asks, and she bites her lip. _I had a wonderful time with you on Friday night by the way, but you knew that already_ , he adds before she can reply.

 _I'm a little intimidated by the broadness of the question_ , she texts back.

_That's fair enough. Shall I turn it into a multiple choice questionnaire, or is that too much like life imitating art?_

She laughs and downs the last of her fruit smoothie. _You mean, am I into the whole professor-student thing? I am, but not the punishment aspect_ , she types and sends before she can think twice.

 _I gathered that_. _What about positions, if that's not too crude to ask over text?_

_It is a little indelicate._

_Sorry about that, darling_ , he teases.

 _But I'm a big girl, I can handle a bit of sex talk_ , she replies, lying on her cramped sofa, legs wriggling at her own daring.

 _I can start, if you like_ , he texts. _I'd like to see you ride me again, see your tits bounce. Thoughts?_

 _That sounds fine with me_ , she says, sliding a hand inside her leggings.

_Your turn._

_I'd like to try it on all fours, I've never done that before_. She can feel her cheeks blushing.

_I'd be more than happy to initiate you in that, Sansa._

"Fuck," she whispers, head dropping back.

_Your thoughts on a bit of light bondage?_

_Tentatively positive?_ she replies. _I'm not sure I'll know how I feel until we try it_.

_That's fine, darling. We can check in lots, use a safeword. And other roleplay?_

_That's another broad question._

_Alright, let's save that for later. So, when are you free next?_

She pictures him in his spacious townhouse or in his car in a parking spot, texting her with a smirk on his face, hard in his trousers but with the self-control not to touch himself. _Tomorrow night?_

_It's a date. Shall I pick you up and bring you to mine, or would you prefer it if we went out for dinner first?_

_Let's get a takeaway at yours, after._

_I like where your thoughts are at_ , he replies and then she jumps up and heads to her shower, skin overheated, smile so wide her cheeks hurt.

 

It's the first cold day of the year on Tuesday when he picks her up, and the leaves are starting to drop from the trees. She's wearing thick white tights in deference to the weather, and because she likes the silky feel of them even if they are awkward to remove. On top of the tights she's wearing a navy minidress with a white peter pan collar. She likes to think her outfit is straddling the line of costume and ordinary clothes.

"Nice tights," he says, once he's kissed her in greeting and she's slid into his car, resting one of his hands proprietorily on her knee. "No Mary-Janes to complete the outfit?" he teases, looking down at her ankle boots.

"I thought that might be a bit too much," she says, trying not to get embarrassed, trying to own her choices.

"Who knew such a sweet-looking girl had such a dirty mind," he smirks.

"I like your suit," she remarks; glancing at the slim, pin-striped number, with the thin tie and silver tie-pin.

"And now we look perfectly matched, the ruthless capitalist and the naive ingénue." He laughs.

"Oh god, no shop talk tonight please," she says as they whizz through the streets.

"No lectures on the finer points of fiscal policy? Shame. But I'd be happy to listen to you talk in any of your many languages."

"Let's stick with English to start," she says, and the car stops smoothly outside his house.

She could get used to being escorted from a car to a front door, she thinks, his hand on her lower back. When they're inside, she toes off her shoes and looks around, more aware of her surroundings this time.

"Shall I give you the tour?" he asks, watching her intently.

"Yes please," she says.

"So polite," he says with a smile, brushing a thumb over her cheek and making her stomach flutter.

He leads her by the hand through his open-plan living room and dining room, with its interesting combination of soft furnishings - velvet sofas and leather armchairs - with bare brick and concrete architectural features, the glass of the open staircase a focal point. Next she sees the kitchen, gleaming stainless steel set against the weathered wooden kitchen table with its stylish multi-coloured chairs that looks out over the small garden through the bifold glass doors.

When they go back through the living room she tugs him over to the sofa, sitting down on it and looking up at him as he stands over her, squirming a little in the seat.

"Here in the living room? How modern of you," he teases, stroking a hand down the side of her face, kissing her on the forehead. Then he sits down next to her and tugs her legs into his lap. "Have I mentioned that I'm a fan of these tights," he says, running his hands up and down her calves. She likes the pleasing contrast of his tanned skin against the white nylon.

He shifts his body around, stretching his legs out on the wide seat of the sofa and dragging her by the hips to sit in his lap, hands rubbing up and down her thighs. "Oh, would you look at that, you're sitting in my lap," he says with a wicked smile.

"Petyr," she says, and tilts her head, but she's breathing heavily now.

He digs his hands into her ass and pulls her towards him, rubbing her cunt against the bulge in his trousers. She bends her head and kisses him and he soon takes charge, tilting her head the way he wants, biting gently at her bottom lip and then soothing the bite with his tongue, moving to suck at her neck. "Thoughts on love marks?" he asks.

"You mean hickeys?" she gasps, fingers rasping through his salt-and-pepper hair which is curling out of its careful style already.

"You young people and your slang."

"I wear a lot of scarves," she says.

"Excellent," he replies, and sucks a mark at the base of her neck and when he's done he smooths a thumb across the damp skin and looks pleased. "Now let's get these tights off," he says, propping her up on her knees to pull down the waistband, expertly manoeuvring her legs and then throwing the tights over the back of the sofa to make her laugh. But when he realises that she's not wearing any underwear underneath them he groans and cups his palm over her mound, squeezing it lightly and making her whimper. "You dirty little thing," he teases.

He fits two fingers of one hand inside of her while he unbuckles his belt and unzips himself with the other, finding a condom from somewhere. "Thoughts on fucking while fully clothed?" he grits out as she rides his fingers and bites at his jaw.

"Positive," she gasps, and he lifts her up and puts the head of his cock at the entrance of her cunt, controlling her slow slide down. She moans when she's fully seated and watches him clench his jaw, feels his fingertips bite into her hips.

"Let's try slow," he says, rocking her back and forth. He's still wearing his jacket and tie and it's driving her crazy. "We could fuck in public like this and no one would be the wiser," he says and she feels her cunt clench around him, her eyes screw shut.

"You like that idea, darling?" he laughs. "Of course, your little noises would rather give the game away," he says as he rubs his thumb on her clit. "And I've changed my mind, I'd like to get your tits out," he adds, unbuttoning the top of her dress. "This is pretty," he says, fingering the lace of her black bra.

She has no idea where he gets the wherewithal to speak right now, she feels like she's going to spin apart - the hard, hot feel of him inside her; the smell of his cologne; the rub of his suit trousers against her bare thighs; his _voice_.

" _Petyr,_ " she whines, riding him as he bucks his hips up, as he sucks at her nipples through her bra.

"Good girl," he says, sitting back to look at her as she flushes under his hot gaze, "look at you, you're so good for me."

She grips her fingers in his shirt collar and comes, grinding deep, almost sobbing at the way her muscles lock up.

"There you go," he says, and then bites his lip and comes too, a curl of his hair flopping over his forehead.

"I should have brought a change of clothes," she says, once she's got her breath back and he's zipped up his trousers and removed his jacket and tie. She's curled up in his lap, her dress buttoned-up again, while he strokes a hand down her back and kisses her idly.

"Hmm?" he says.

"This dress smells like sex now."

He puts his nose to her shoulder and breathes in noisily and she swats him away.

"Food?" she asks then, her stomach grumbling. "And can I borrow a shirt again?"

"You don't have to ask to wear my clothes. And I know you said takeaway, but do you mind if I cook for you?"

"Not at all," she says.

While he makes them food she snoops in the kitchen cupboards, wearing one of his shirts and her tights that she put on again after a quick shower.

"Find anything interesting?" he asks.

"My mum used to have glasses like these," she says, bringing them out. "I never asked her what drink they were meant to be for."

"Sherry," he says. "Those ones happen to be my sole inheritance from my father."

"Really?" she asks curiously, watching as he chops up the vegetables for the stirfry. "What did he do, your father?"

"He was a salesman, door-to-door and then he had a little shop that he wanted me to take over. But I had bigger plans."

She's surprised that he's so open with that part of his past, he seems like someone that's very into appearances, into being successful. Although perhaps that's the point, that he's made it on his own back, from nothing.

"And your mother?"

"She died when I was a teenager, about the same age as you were, I think," he adds mildly.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I know that's not the thing to say, I know that I _hate_ it when people say that to me, sorry," she adds quickly, turning away and admonishing herself.

He puts his knife down and comes over to her, tugs the end of her messy ponytail. She's relieved he isn't trying to hug her. "It's fine, Sansa. I appreciate the sentiments. There's never a right thing to say anyway, is there."

She shakes her head and he squeezes her side briefly and then returns to his chopping. She moves to the next cabinet which is full to bursting with all sorts of kitchen gadgets. "What's this?" she asks, holding it up.

"Avocado cutter."

"That's niche," she says. "And this?"

"Pineapple slicer."

" _No_ ," she says in disbelief. "Do you eat a lot of pineapples?"

"Almost never."

She laughs.

"If you rummage around in that drawer," he nods, "you can find a bean slicer."

"A _bean_ slicer. What kind of bean?"

"Green bean."

"So do you fancy yourself a cook then. Should I up my expectations for this stirfry."

"Not really," he says with a wry grin, "I just like buying things."

"Fair enough."

"Now come over here and choose the wine," he says and she slides across the smooth stone floor and presents herself in front of him.

He smiles indulgently and kisses her.

 

**

 

There's a longer gap between their second and third dates but he isn't worried, he expected it after their brief conversation about their parents, and after the sex too which she seems to find overwhelming. It's clear that she hasn't much experience at all, and he's thrilled to be able to broaden her horizons, to be a safe partner for her to experiment with, not that he thinks she's into anything out of the ordinary. Their tastes seem to be almost equally matched which pleases him immensely, although he knows that even if they weren't he'd be happy to only have sex the way she wanted it.

He knows that he's single-minded about her, in the same way he's been single-minded about his career, and making money from his investments, but he can't see it as a bad thing. She seems to enjoy his focus, his attention, and he tries to save it up for when they're together, carefully measuring out any texts between. He doesn't need to search her out on social media or try and bump into her around campus, not when he can simply remember the evenings they've spent together or plan the next one in his head - and her interest in a bit of exhibitionism has certainly piqued his interest and he has some thoughts about the venue for their first attempt.

He can admit that perhaps he's been lonely these past few years, that he's been filling his hours with other things rather than returning to a large, echoing house. He likes to see her in his kitchen, in his living room and bedroom; likes to see her snooping around and lounging on the furniture, looking comfortable. He's looking forward to seeing her own studio when he gets her to invite him round, to learning more about her from what is and isn't there.

For their next date, they meet at a bar in the old town. He likes the suspense of not knowing what she's going to wear and is duly rewarded when she arrives in a pair of tight jeans and a halterneck top with no back to it, underneath her thin coat. And he tries not to ponder too deeply what it means that he notices that her coat is thin, that he thinks she should be wrapping herself up more now that it's October. She's also wearing a pair of flat ballet shoes. He's noticed that she doesn't really wear heels and he hopes she isn't doing it for his benefit, he's man enough not to care if she towers over him, and besides, her legs would look amazing in them.

"You look gorgeous, darling," he tells her, kissing her cheek.

"You look good too," she says. He appreciates that someone else notices his suits, and the workmanship of his tailors.

"Did you have a good week?" he asks, once he's ordered them two glasses of champagne. He likes it when food takes time and work to prepare but he holds no truck with fancy cocktails, you're just paying for good alcohol to be watered-down.

"Yes," she says. "I got lots of work done. Finished an essay, passed a French test so I can take a course on decadence in European literature. You?"

"Same old," he says with a shrug. "Corralling annoying undergraduates-"

She acts offended.

"This is economics, Sansa. Most of them are idiots."

She laughs and sips her champagne.

"Submitted some proposals, finished a chapter of my next book, schmoozed with a university donor."

"Do they ever pimp you out to female donors, does that ever happen in the same way you hear it happen with male donors?"

"You've heard of students being pimped out to male donors?"

"Well, urban myths, you know."

"I'm not really interested in selling my body for university funds. Now, personal funds," he drawls, "it depends how many millions we're talking."

"You think you're worth millions?" she teases.

He shrugs his shoulders and finishes his own champagne. He feels like they're inching towards a discussion of sugar daddies and he decides to steer them clear of it. He'd be happy to provide for Sansa, to lavish her with gifts, but he knows already that nothing would make her flee faster.

"I wondered if we might go back to yours after this," he says. "I have to admit to being curious about graduate lodgings."

"Really?" she says, "it's very small."

"Will it fit two of us?" he teases. "I fancy the challenge of a single bed." He puts a hand on her thigh under the table and watches her inhale sharply. She's so easy to turn on, as easy as he is for her, though she doesn't seem to know that yet.

He doesn't think he's smug in thinking that she isn't affected like this by anyone else; if she was, she wouldn't be continuing her self-defined "fling" with him. He's certain that she hasn't noticed that it's only her that's talking about their relationship as being only a bit of fun, that he's been making noncommittal noises in response to her assertions.

"You'll be pleased to know that I do have a double bed."

"Excellent. And floor space?"

She quirks her face. "Why?"

He leans a little closer. "I remember you saying something about being on all-fours, didn't you? It's better when you don't have to catch your balance on a wonky mattress."

"Is that so."

"Mmm," he says, "with padding down for your knees of course."

She bites her lip and when he strokes a hand up her arm he notices the hairs have stood on end.

Her studio is just as neat as he imagined, and as impersonal as he thought it might be. Easy to pack up and leave. Perhaps his house is the same, sherry glasses notwithstanding, he doesn't keep any photos and mementos. He imagines that she does keep a photo album somewhere, photos she could scrounge up from distant relatives after her house burned down with her family and all their belongings inside of it. His heart hurts when he thinks of her all alone, and the thought of her coming home that evening and finding the shell of the house there— That she has survived, that she has achieved all she has and is able to open herself up the small amount she does, to show hints of vulnerability, is miraculous.

"So, what do you think of the space?" she asks, her hands fiddling with the hem of her top.

"It's certainly small," he says, approaching her. "But I like what you've done with it." He smooths his hands down her bare back and kisses her, their teeth knocking together briefly as she sways forward.

Sometime later, she is bent over her bed, knees on her sheepskin rug, as he fucks her from behind, running a hand up and down her spine, using the other to tug her back to him, as she whines and moans, and flips her hair back now and then, making his hips stutter. He's not as young as he once was, and his knees are starting to ache but he distracts himself by sucking marks into her back, by reaching a hand to rub her clit and feel the width of his cock stretching her open. The litany of filthy praise he tells her comes effortlessly to him; she really is good for him, perfect, the sweetest of girls, he thinks as she clenches down on his cock and then flops onto the bed as he pulls out, removes the condom, and finishes on her lower back.

After he's cleaned them both up, they lie on her bed - which feels precariously narrow after a lifetime of sleeping on queens and kings. He traces her freckles and moles, the marks he's made, as she stares back at him, apparently fascinated by his sparse chest hair which started turning grey a few years ago.

"Do you usually sleep with younger women?" she asks, leaning her head on her hand. Her cheeks are still flushed; he loves the way her pale skin holds colour.

"No, not really. To tell you the truth, I don't sleep with that many women at all. I used to when I was young but now I'd say it's only a few, if that, each year. I'm comfortable with my own company, and it takes someone special to catch my attention, and that's not just a line," he says, stroking the soft skin of her stomach, watching it shiver.

"You're only my fifth partner ever." Her last partner, if he has his way. "I was a virgin until last year, is that embarrassing?"

"No," he shakes his head. "I was a late bloomer too, I waited until university."

"I'm glad I'm meeting you now, I'm not sure we would have matched if we were the same age, is that odd to say?"

"I agree," he says, purposefully not drawing attention to the way she seems to be talking about the two of them as if they're not just a casual fling, as if they could be something more.

 

**

 

About a month into her and Petyr's thing, as the nights are started to get dark and November has brought endless rain that has put an end to her morning jogs – and as she is trying not to think about the self-imposed deadline she made, reasoning that things can still be casual beyond a month, that don't people have fuck-buddies for, like, half a year? – he texts her on a late afternoon after she's spent the day in the library researching her next essay.

And when she tells him she's in the library, and he asks her if she's interested in a study break, he says he'll meet her there. She's in a quiet corner of the literature floor and he kisses her briefly in greeting. There's no rules against them being together, since they're in completely different departments, but she's aware that she'd get certain side-eyed looks if other people saw them around campus.

"Let me show you something," he says, and once she's packed up her things in her satchel she follows him, curious, as they take the lift to the sixth floor. It's not a floor she's ever visited before, housing as it does certain sciences that have nothing to do with her studies.

"What are you taking me to see?" she asks as he leads her across the bridge linking up the old and the new library buildings and then through two sets of doors and into the computer science section, which looks forlorn and forgotten.

Instead of answering, he leans over and flicks a few switches by the inside of the door, plunging the large room into darkness as she yelps and clutches his arm.

"Are you frightened of the dark?"

"No, just surprised," she says.

"Good," he says, and she can hear his smile. "This way," he says, nudging her along the corridor and then taking a right at one of the last aisles, pulling her down towards the curtained window.

"Tell me, Sansa," he asks when they get near the end, crowding her up against the darkened stacks, "have you ever had sex in a library?"

"No," she says, breath hitching, her hands clutching the back of his blazer as he presses his body against hers.

"Would you like to, darling?" he murmurs in her ear.

She nods and he breathes a laugh. "You'd have to be very quiet though," he says, and she can feel his wicked smile against her lips as they kiss. "Do you think you can do that, be a good girl for me?"

" _Fuck_ ," she whispers, as his hand slides down her side and tugs up her dress.

"I think you wore this dress and these lovely thigh-high socks because you were thinking about this, weren't you, hmm?" he asks between sucking kisses on her neck, groping her through her damp knickers.

If she does choose her clothes with him in mind, while daydreaming about flirty scenarios and fantasies, then so what.

She's muffling her gasps in his mouth now as he pulls down her knickers and works two fingers in, widening her hips around his hand. "Please," she whimpers. the stacks are bruising her back but she doesn't care, she'll die if he doesn't get his cock in her.

"Alright, darling, I know you want it," he says, and pushes her down the aisle until her back is against the curtain of the window, lifting her up onto the low windowsill.

" _Petyr_ ," she moans, scrabbling at his trousers and then putting her hands to either side of her on the ledge to help her balance as he gets his cock out and puts a condom on.

"We need to be quiet, darling," he says, entering her with a slow thrust, his own voice catching.

The thought that there might be people nearby, that they might walk down the corridor and see the dark shape of the two them at the end of this aisle, their bare skin hidden by the fall of his blazer, has her ready to come almost immediately.

She wraps her arms around his back and kisses him as he thrusts and works a hand between them to rub her clit, and when she does come she bites his shoulder and almost falls off the windowsill until he grabs onto her thighs tightly and makes a few last, pounding thrusts. In the end it's him that makes the noise when he comes, a grunt that echoes in the quiet darkness and makes her giggle.

"Oh, you think this is funny," he says, as he pulls out of her and deftly ties up the condom, flipping down the skirt of her dress.

"Not funny at all. Just a shocking disregard for university regulations, Professor Baelish."

He pinches her side and then kisses her. "I couldn't help myself, your honour, I was seduced by a very naughty student. Defenceless against her short dresses."

"Where are my knickers?" she asks as she neatens herself up.

"I seem to have misplaced them-"

"Petyr-"

"-in my pocket. Think of it as payment for laughing at me. A man is very vulnerable about the sounds he makes when he comes, Sansa," and she can feel his smile when he ducks forward and kisses her again.

"Pervert," she says, and then they hear the sound of a door opening and the click of the bank of lights being turned on. "Fuck!" she says, pushing him away and patting down her hair.

It's fine," he says lazily. "We're perfectly presentable."

 

When she texts Margaery to tell her about her library escapade, the other woman texts back a string of shocked emojis. _I didn't know you had it in you_ , she says.

 _Neither did I_ , Sansa says. Should she be shocked and horrified by her actions? What they did didn't harm anyone, and it wasn't _that_ outrageous. And it was good, she thinks, toes curling as she lies on her bed that night and tries to read a novel for her course.

She's been trying not to text Petyr too much, reasoning that she doesn't want him to think that she wants more than they have, and also not wanting to annoy him, although he honestly seems delighted by her all the time, so she's not actually sure she could. His attraction to her, his focus, is highly flattering, exciting, and just the tiniest bit dangerous.

 _I can't believe we did that_ , she texts him, giving in.

 _Would a repeat cement it more securely in your mind?_ he texts back almost straightaway and she flops back on her bed with a smile. She likes how she can hear his voice in his texts, how she can picture his teasing smile.

_Where's the craziest place you've ever had sex?_

_Why, looking for suggestions? A car maybe, a lift once. I don't have many crazy stories._

_Your fancy sports car._

_"My fancy sports car". It has a make, you know. And I'm noting that down, sweetheart, that you want to fuck in my car one day._

_I didn't say that._

_You implied._

_I have a bunch of essays and exams coming up,_ she texts, realising why she wanted to text him in the first place. _I'm not sure I'll have time to see you for a few weeks._  She holds her breath once she's sent it. What if he thinks she's brushing him off, letting him down?

_That's alright, darling._

_I think I'll miss you_ , she texts and then swears under breath. Casual, she reminds herself. Don't imply you're looking for anything more.

_As will I, Sansa, most definitely. We'll have to celebrate once your essays are in. Have a think about what you'd like to do._

_Tease._

_Sweetheart, if one of us is a tease it is most definitely you. Have you seen your little skirts and dresses? And don't think I haven't noticed your judicious employment of some flirty lip-biting._

She squirms on her bed. Says the man who is flirting incarnate, she thinks.

She does miss him over the next few weeks, and finds herself picking up and putting down her phone at odd intervals. Instead, she bothers Margaery, Jon, and Jaime, who she has neglected to contact at all since he set her up with Petyr and who tells her that he has a girlfriend now, a woman called Brienne. _I'm as surprised as anyone,_ he tells Sansa _, and you'd be surprised if you met her. She's not my type at all, except it turns out she totally is._

Sansa is pleased for him but does feel a slight pang of envy. On some level she wants a partner as much as she fears having one and flees from the whole idea of commitment. Having someone she could rely on, someone by her side, someone that was _hers_ , that stayed, that loved her. Her heart kicks in a kind of panic when she thinks of it.

The moment she hands in her last essay, she texts Petyr, _I'm finished!_ and he texts her straight back, offering to pick her up and drive her to his for dinner.

She's about to reply in the affirmative when she stops and goes into the bathroom, drops her leggings and studies her reflection in the full-length mirror.

 _I haven't waxed_ , she texts him.

_That's fine._

_No, I mean my bikini line, my thighs, you know._

_Again, that's fine, Sansa. No one waxed when I was young, I promise you I can handle your bush whatever style it's in._

Alright, she thinks, shrugging. _Pick me up whenever you're free then._

_I'll be round in half an hour._

_Great!_  she texts and then rolls her eyes at the perkiness of her text. 

She gets dressed in a pair of jeans and a warm jumper and brushes out her hair, not having the spare brain-space to doll herself up like normal; sitting on her bed counting down the minutes on her phone, her body almost vibrating. Who knew you could start to become habituated to frequent sex she thinks, ignoring that it's just sex with Petyr that has her feeling this way, that she can't imagine wanting someone else this desperately.

She gathers her things - phone, laptop, a few of the books she needs for class, a spare set of clothes - and waits outside her front door for him, glad that it's a rare sunny day, and when his car comes roaring up the street she bounces on her toes and runs over to it.

"There you are," he says, when she slides into the car before he has a chance to get out and open the door. "You're a sight for sore eyes," he adds with a warm smile.

"So are you," she says and leans over to kiss him, and he strokes a hand up her back. "Sorry I'm not-" she tugs her jumper.

"You look adorable," he says fondly, "and most importantly warm. Can't have you getting a cold in this weather," he says and then the car screeches off and she laughs and clutches the dashboard.

"In a hurry?" she asks.

"Just a little. I've got a passenger who is in dire need of some celebratory orgasms."

She shakes her head. "You're ridiculous."

"You love it," he mocks and she settles back in her seat, smiling widely.

When they get to his house he crowds her upstairs to his bedroom, pushing her back on his bed where she lands with a giggle, and then he tugs off her jeans and knickers and puts his mouth on her cunt like he's starving for her, eating her out with breathless enthusiasm as she lifts up her knees and clutches his head, writhing on the bed and coming twice, loudly, before he's satisfied and sits back on his heels, looking rumpled and very proud of himself.

"Oh my god," she says weakly and his smile broadens. "I'm useless now, sorry, you'll have to get yourself off," she says, waving a limp hand.

"That's alright, I can wait until after dinner."

"You can?" she asks, pushing herself up on her elbows, and then pulling off her jumper because she looks silly with the top half of her still dressed.

"I'm not a teenager anymore," he says, but he's eying her translucent pink bra with interest and she feels a resurgence of energy.

"On second thoughts," she says, "If you don't mind me not being terrible athletic–"

She watches as he undresses. She likes that he doesn't have a perfect body, and that he isn't too large next to her. He's slim and strong, with the perfect amount of body hair, and a rather lovely cock.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks as he peels his socks off.

"Your cock," she says, and he smirks.

Later they're lying out in his bed, after a brief interlude when they scrounged up sandwiches from the kitchen - which, this being Petyr's kitchen, were filled with beetroot houmous, avocado cut by Sansa with his fancy avocado cutter, and an expensive sprouted salad - and some white wine from his chilled cabinet.

He's been kissing her slowly all over, roaming her body, narrating each part and making her hide her face in embarrassment.

"-and as for your pussy," he says, as he twirls his fingertips around it, rubbing at the side of her clit, leaning down to flick little licks over it, putting his thumb inside her cunt to rub the roof of it.

"Can you not call it that?" she gasps.

"What? Pussy?"

"Yes," she says, squirming.

"You're sure you don't like it when I talk about your pussy? You twitch every time I do."

"Petyr," she whines.

"Well?" he says, unfairly taking his hands back.

"Fine, call it that."

"Call it what?" he laughs. "I'm kidding. You don't have to say it, darling, I'm fine with being the only one talking about your pretty pussy."

She groans and covers her face with her hands but her hips are pulsing and she's wetter than ever around his fingers.

 

She stays at his house for three days in a row; finally, reluctantly, leaving when she has a class to go to. They didn't just spend their time having sex, they did other things too, cooked together, watched TV, stayed up talking in front of the fancy fire in his living room. She read a few books for class as he typed away on his laptop in the same room and one evening he emerged from his room wearing glasses, saying his eyes were tired, acting bemused at the way she almost pounced on him.

She's trying not to think about what it will be like not to see him anymore, when this thing has run its course. She has fun with him, he makes her feel good about herself, comfortable, and she's grown terribly fond of him – and his house, she thinks, circling her small studio the first evening back there alone, feeling flat and dull. And lonely.

She flops back on her bed, picks up her phone and puts it down again, picks it up and then shoves it under her pillow and sits at her desk. There's always more work to do, more further reading, more research. She might have got excellent marks on her essays and exams so far, but she can always be better.

 

**

 

He's having a dilemma about Christmas and what to get her. He wants to buy her lots of things - dresses, lingerie, books, a few things to decorate her studio, a new warm coat lined with sheepskin, a key to his house, a car – but he knows he'll spook her if he does. What he should do is ask her whether gift-giving is within the parameters of their relationship, but those two words "parameters" and "relationship" will only act like an alarm in her head.

He has a pile in one of his many spacious cupboards of things he's bought for her and is waiting to give her, once it's the right time, once she's open to that, but it makes him feel a slight sad pang when he opens the door and adds something else to it.

He's decided that a box of hard-to-source chocolates and some warm cashmere socks are entirely inoffensive presents that she can't argue with, and ignored his greater impulse to stuff the toes of the socks with diamond jewellery and pearl earrings that would look perfect with her complexion. Next year, he thinks doggedly.

 

"So," Jaime Lannister says to him one morning in December when Petyr is having a rare, terrible, coffee at a cafe on campus, irritated at the department meeting that went an hour over time due to some asinine suggestions from certain members of staff. "How are things?"

Petyr sips at his coffee and purses his mouth. Is it possible this gets worse with every sip. "Fine, thank you," he says.

"I'm also fine," Jaime says, sitting down opposite him and jarring the little table so that Petyr has to hold onto the cup in case it spills over his laptop.

"That's wonderful to hear," Petyr replies mildly, still ignoring him.

"I hear on the grapevine that the infamous bachelor Baelish has been tamed."

Petyr sighs wearily. "None of the words you're saying make any sense."

"They don't? So I'm free to set Sansa up with a visiting lecturer next semester? He's a rather charming older man."

Petyr's jaw ticks. As if Sansa would be open to dating anyone else. "I'd rather you didn't do that."

"Oh would you," Jaime says, and leans over to steal the free biscuit that Petyr had ignored. "I've barely heard from her actually, she's been busy. She's happy, you know."

"I know."

"Is that down to you?"

Petyr shrugs. He thinks it is but he won't say that to Jaime.

"I have to say that I'm impressed. I was a bit nervous to suggest you to her in the beginning but it turns out my instincts were right."

"Thank you," Petyr grits out.

"You're very welcome," Jaime says pleasantly and stands up, brushing biscuit crumbs off his jumper with his hand.

"I heard that you're spoken for too these days," Petyr says.

"I am."

"I'm pleased for you," Petyr says, putting as much warmth into his voice as possible.

"Thank you," Jaime says warily and then leaves, but not before tapping the lip of Petyr's cup. "You should go to the cafe in the sociology building, the coffee is much better there."

He doesn't dignify Jaime's suggestion with a response, only nudges the cup away from himself.

Petyr is not jealous of Jaime's night with Sansa because it doesn't matter who gets there first, only that there's no one after you, that you're the best. If Petyr had been here last year, and not in the Vale, no doubt Sansa would have chosen him for her first, he would certainly have encouraged her to, but he wasn't here and that's that, he can only work with what he has now and not let the opportunity slip away.

 

A week before Christmas – which he has inferred, from the slightest of information, that she will be spending with her brother in a hotel in Highgarden, somewhere with no reminders of her home and her family, he thinks – he gives her his two carefully wrapped presents as she gets her shoes on and he picks up his car keys, ready to drive her back to hers after a long afternoon spent in bed.

She looks surprised but pleased when she takes the gifts from him.

"You didn't have to," she says without conviction, and he watches her reactions greedily. "Oh, these are cute," she says about the pink socks. "And cashmere too," she says, and rubs them against her arm. "Thank you, Petyr," she says with a small smile.

"You're welcome. Open the other one."

"OK," she says, rocking on one foot, opening the wrapping paper carefully like she's one of those people that folds it away and saves it. "Oh my god," she says when she sees the chocolates, all of them lemon flavoured in a different way. "How did you find these?"

He shrugs a shoulder. "There were in some shop I went into last week, and I remembered how much you liked lemon."

"I do," she says, toying with the flap to open them. "Thank you," she says, and hugs him and he holds her tightly, breathing in the smell of her shampoo. "I only got you a card, I'm afraid," she says, pulling back from him and bending over her bag.

He watches the way her tiny skirt drags even further up her thighs as she rifles through her bag and is proud that he refrains himself from patting her bottom fondly.

"Here," she says, popping up and blowing her hair out of her face.

He takes the plain envelope from her and opens it, trying not to look too excited, trying to act casual. The card has a large picture of a bird dusted with snow on the cover.

"Like that tie-pin you wear," she says. "I tried to find the right bird, I know it's not quite right."

"It's lovely, Sansa," he says, thumbing the cover. The message inside is short but hardly impersonal, she's fitted two inside-jokes in it and signed off with three kisses. "Thank you," he says, and she smiles at him.

"I'll have to buy you some socks too on my holiday," she says. "I'll try not to find the most obnoxious tourist pair."

"You do that," he says, and tugs a piece of her hair.

"You like neon, right?" she asks, blinking at him guilelessly.

"I love it."

She laughs and spins around to get her jacket off the hook. He places the card on his hall table. It's the only personal card he'll get this year, the only one he's got for many years. He automatically throws away the ones he gets from businesses and coworkers.

He misses Sansa over Christmas but only in the same way he always does. He doesn't have emotional ties to the season, it's just an irritation - the restaurants and bars and dry cleaners being shut, having to duck out of the way of the few people left on campus who assault his ears with variations of "Merry Christmas." If Sansa ever wanted to celebrate Christmas, to get a tree and go to the ballet and drink hot chocolate in their pyjamas or nonsense like that then he'd do it, to make her happy, but not for anyone else.

 

**

 

She meets up with Petyr the day after she gets back, and neither of them mention Christmas at all, which is just the way she likes it. They have dinner first, instead of going straight to his bedroom, and she can tell by his focus that he wants to impress her with what he's making, which involves a "sous-vide" whatever that is.

"Are you sleeping with anyone else right now?" she asks, in a carefully casual tone. She's been thinking about something over the break as she lounged around the pretty hotel Jon had found for them, in between reading trashy novels and dutifully ignoring the season, except for the day itself which was spent reminiscing with her brother and getting emotional and then very drunk as they shared a bottle of pre-made mulled wine.

"No. Are you?" Petyr returns, without looking up from his chopping board.

"No. Do you think we can get our tests done and stop using condoms?"

He stops and turns around. "Of course, you want to do that?" he says, looking at her intently.

"I've never had sex without them before, I just want to try it," she says with a shrug of her shoulder.

"I'll book myself in this week." He comes to her side and strokes a hand through her hair as she looks up at him.

"And you have to let me know if you do sleep with anyone else, you know, once we've started-"

"Of course, Sansa, of course I would. I wouldn't risk you like that. And besides, to tell you the truth, there's no one else I'm interested in at the moment, not that I'd have the time."

"Me neither."

"Good," he says, with a pleased smile.

"Good."

A few weeks later, once they've both got their tests back, they try it out. Sansa feels oddly nervous in advance. Margaery seemed to think it _meant something_ when she told her over coffee.

" _Oh_ ," she had said, speculatively and sipped on her soy latte.

"What?" Sansa had replied.

"Nothing," Margaery had said knowingly and then Sansa asked her how her own dating life was to distract her.

But Petyr doesn't act like anything's different. He's his normal, enthusiastic, extremely attentive self.

She's not sure it feels different as he thrusts into her, her legs around his hips, his pelvis smacking into hers. She has her head in the crook of his arm and she feels surrounded by him, his chest rubbing against her breasts, his stomach against hers.

"You want it?' he murmurs into her ear, lips buzzing the skin. "You want me to come in you? Have you been a good girl?" he asks, and she hears his smirk in his voice.

"Uh-huh," she says, nodding, her cunt twitching.

He groans her name loudly when he comes, digging a hand tightly into her thigh.

"So, verdict?" he asks a moment later, panting, lying on his back next to her.

"I don't know," she squints, shifting her hips. "Feels weird now, wet."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Haven't decided. You like it though, I bet," she says, watching his eyes glint. "All that caveman stuff, that whole breeding thing."

" _Breeding thing_ ," he repeats delightedly and she turns to hide her face in the pillow.

"Don't mock me," she whines.

"I'll breed you if you like, sweetheart, is that what you want?" he teases, crawling over her as she squirms with embarrassment.

"No," she moans, " _Petyr_."

"I didn't know you were such a dirty little thing, Sansa."

"Ugh, you're so creepy," she says, stomach fluttering as he presses himself against her.

"You're into it," he says confidently, putting his hand on her cunt, playing his fingers through his cum.

 

But despite her relief at him not asking her about Christmas a few weeks ago, at them avoiding the whole topic of her family as usual, she finds herself bringing it up the next morning, like she's both pressing on a bruise and desperately wanting to share more with him, to be comforted at this particular time of year.

"I hate January," she says, as they stand in his kitchen and eat the last of the lemon chocolates she saved and brought back with her. She's already given him the terrible, plaid, pair of socks she bought in Highgarden, that he's promised straight-faced to wear the next time they go out to a bar together.

"As months go, it's pretty bad," he reasons, his shoulder brushing against hers as they lean back against the kitchen counter.

She picks at a piece of lemon peel in her teeth and then takes a breath. "My family died in January. It was the old boiler, it had a fault, you know," she says, trailing off, her voice sounding loud in the room, her heart picking up even though her body language is studiously casual.

Thankfully, he doesn't express his sympathies, so she goes on.

"I forget all the time that they're gone, I wake up expecting to hear their voices, to see them poke their heads round the door." Her mouth is dry and she's staring resolutely ahead through the glass doors at the bare trees in his garden. "But I remember them as they were, and they'd be older now, wouldn't they. My mum and dad-" her voice wobbles and she pauses.

He puts a careful hand on her shoulder and even that is too much right now and she pulls away and rubs at her face. "I think I better go home," she says, with a fake smile.

Her heart is panicking in her chest. This was a terrible idea.

The soft way he is looking at her makes her ache, makes her want to cry, and she _really_ doesn't want to cry in front of him.

"Sansa-" he says.

"No, really, I just remembered I have a book to read for my class tomorrow."

"Sansa, it's alright. We can talk about something else, do something else."

"I have to go," she states, "I'll get a bus," and she barrels out of his house, both immensely thankful, and terribly sad, that he doesn't chase after her.

 

 **

 

He knew something like this was coming. They've been together for more than four months now and it would have been impossible for them to avoid the topic of her family forever. He didn't want her to avoid it, he wanted her to be able to talk about it, if she wanted, he'd never push her on something like that, he just wants her to feel safe enough to talk about anything she wants with him.

And so he isn't worried, he isn't panicked when she brushes him off and makes excuses. He's in this for the long game. One blip like this won't put him off.

And even if she goes and sleeps with someone else now, it won't hurt him. He did far worse when he was dealing with the shit of his teenage years and later; endless hazy, destructive nights he's only too happy not to remember fully.

There's a kinship to the two of them, a shared woundedness at the world. It's only that he's older, and dare he say it, wiser, certainly old enough now not to really need anyone else in the way that he knows she needs people. He might not need her, but he wants her, he wants to help her and care for her and love her.

 

**

 

Sansa gives cursory replies to Petyr's texts over the next few weeks, feigning a busy start to the new semester, which is partly true because her professor for her music and translation course is the harshest marker she's ever had. And it's while she's finishing up an essay for that particular course that she gets an odd pain in her stomach. And by the time she's submitted her paper, the pain has only increased and moved to her lower right-hand side.

She convinces herself that she's just eaten something her stomach doesn't agree with, and tries to take a nap, but when the pain makes her vomit, when she's started making keening sounds with it, she gives in and calls an ambulance.

Then everything moves very quickly and she finds herself inside the ambulance, workers around her, asking her questions, her head spinning. She gets out her phone at one point, as the workers move to the front of the ambulance to confer, and has an odd thought about texting Petyr, and then they've reached the hospital and she can't think straight anymore with all the pain and a mask is being held over her face and she's being put under.

She wakes up in a hospital room, curtains pulled around her bed, her mouth dry and eyes struggling to focus.

"Petyr?" she croaks, trying to get her eyelids to stay up, wondering if she's still knocked out and that's why he's magically appeared at her bedside.

"Sansa," he says, looking concerned. "How do you feel?" he takes her hand but she can't get her hand to squeeze his back.

"Hurts," she sobs.

"Alright, darling, it's alright, I'll find you a nurse."

She closes her eyes and when she opens them again the light has shifted, it's morning and she's no longer in pain.

"Hello again," Petyr says, sitting in a chair by her bed now, newspaper on his lap, glasses at the end of his nose.

She feels giddy to see him, although perhaps that's the morphine. "I had my appendix out," she says.

"I know you did."

"I am appendix-free."

He smiles indulgently. "And full of morphine."

"That too," she says, nodding and then groaning at how that movement makes her feel dizzy. "How did you get here?"

"I drove."

"No, how did you know-"

"You texted me in the ambulance, some half-nonsense about your appendix, and I arrived at the hospital soon after."

"Oh, I don't remember."

He stands up and leans over her bed, stroking her cheek softly. "It's not really the time to talk about it now, but Sansa, you could have phoned me earlier, when the pain first started, I would have driven you in and stayed with you. You know you can call me anytime, right?"

"I thought I could manage."

"Well, you did. You're here, none the worse for wear. But you don't have to manage by yourself anymore, if you don't want to."

She hums, feeling a little chastened and a lot looked-after.

She's discharged later that day and after the hospital tells her that she has to have someone stay with her for the next day, she agrees to stay at Petyr's. The drive there is disorientating and her insides are beginning to twinge in pain by the time they arrive. He is gentle and careful as he helps her out of the car and up to his house, telling her that he has fresh pyjamas for her, and her favourite soup, that he bought some new tea recently and the sheets are freshly laundered.

His concern for her, his care, is making her feel emotional and she tries to hide it as he helps her change into her new pyjamas, moving her limbs like she's a child, retrieving a pair of scissors to cut out the tag so it won't itch her. But when she's in bed, and he's tucked her in and pointed out all the things on the side table for her - pain pills, water, tea, her fully-charged phone, a new novel – and he's pulled up a chair to sit near her, she can't hold back the tears any longer, and bursts into a noisy crying fit.

"What's wrong? Are you in pain?" he asks, forehead creasing, looking so attentive it only makes her cry harder.

"No," she sobs. "You're being so kind to me."

"That's not a bad thing, is it? You deserve to be looked after, sweetheart."

"You remind me of my dad," she says and then covers her face with her shaking hands. "I'm just emotional, sorry," she cries.

"Hush, now, it's alright," he says, stroking a hand across her forehead. "It's alright. You've had a big shock." He drags his chair closer so he can bend over her. "You've been very brave, you know that?"

"No," she says, shaking her head on the pillow.

"Yes," he says, taking one of her hands in his, and stroking the back of his other hand down her cheek.

"Sorry for making you look after me," she says a while later, once the tears have stopped and turned into an aching headache.

"You didn't make me look after you. You sent me one concerning text message and I decided to do the rest."

"Were you worried about me?" she asks, feeling her breath start to hitch in the beginning of tears. She doesn't want to think about him being worried about her.

"Sansa, it's alright, it's fine," he says, hushing her. "Let's leave the emotional conversations until you've recovered fully from the anaesthetic, alright? All you have to do is rest and recover, that's your job."

"What's your job?" she murmurs, tilting her head to stare at him. His hair is tufted up like he hasn't had the chance to look in a mirror for hours, like he's been running his hand through it.

"To look after you, of course," he says softly, and that's the last thing she remembers until she wakes up the next day to find him lying on top of the duvet next to her, rumpled in his clothes from the day, his cheeks stubbled with grey.

She dozes again, getting annoyed that she can't seem to stay awake for more than a few hours and rouses to the sound of Petyr talking to someone on the phone.

"She's awake now, I can pass her to you," he says. "It's your brother," he tells her.

Sansa holds out a weak hand. "Jon?" she asks, putting the phone on the pillow under her ear so she doesn't have to hold it.

"Sansa, are you alright? Do you want me to come down? I can be there by the end of the day if you need me-"

"No, Jon, I'm fine," she says, and glances up at Petyr, who is back to looking immaculately put together, and who motions his head towards the door and then leaves the room, shutting the door softly behind him. "I'm fine now, honest, just tired and a bit woozy."

"Your boyfriend said you waited quite a long while before you called an ambulance. Why didn't you go in earlier?"

"He's not my boyfriend," she says.

"Well, that's news to him."

"No, it's not, he knows we don't need a label."

"You're obviously feeling better if you're up for arguing semantics with me," Jon says, his voice softening from its earlier frantic tone.

"Semantics, shemantics,"

"Exactly," Jon says fondly. "I can't believe your appendix almost exploded."

"It hurt like a motherfucker."

"I can imagine. But you're not hurting any more, you've got painkillers?"

"I do. I'm just a bit achy."

"And your not-boyfriend is looking after you."

"He is, he's been amazing."

"You sound surprised."

"I don't know," she says and gusts a sigh.

"Hmm," Jon says. "A rich, handsome older man. Sansa, if you don't lock that down I might take my chances," Jon jokes, and Sansa laughs and then groans at the way it hurts her stomach.

"You can't have him."

"But I thought he wasn't yours?"

" _Jon_ ," she says.

"Alright, I'll let you go now. But make sure to get lots of rest, no pushing yourself harder because you've shown a moment of human weakness. Take advantage of the rich sugar daddy, eat some fancy food and get your strength up."

"Fine, I will. Love you, Jon."

"Love you, Sis," he says, and she ends the call and closes her eyes, feeling worn out by a simple phone conversation.

That afternoon she feels well enough to venture out of bed, enticed by the smell of something fabulous.

"I got some food delivered," Petyr says, moving around his kitchen as Sansa slumps in one of the seats at the kitchen table, pulling her dressing gown around her. "I bet I look awful," she groans and then says, "Oh my god," when he sets down a macro bowl in front of her, piled with greens and crisp vegetables, beans, avocado, fluffy rice, houmous, seeds and falafel; and then a plate of sourdough bread and fresh butter next to that. "You're my hero," she says, picking up a falafel.

"I'm glad you like it."

"I didn't know you could get this delivered."

"I pulled some strings," he says, sitting down opposite her, watching her fondly as she digs in ravenously. "And you don't look awful. You look like you've just had an operation."

"Same difference," she says between bites of food. She thinks about teasing him with what Jon said, that he's her sugar daddy, but she wants to steer well clear of the 'd' word after yesterday. Who tells someone they're sleeping with that they remind them of their father? It's mortifying, and she wouldn't be surprised if, after she's returned to her own flat, Petyr cools on their thing; she wouldn't blame him.

"I can be out of your hair tomorrow," she says, smearing butter on a piece of bread, and resolutely avoiding staring at him.

"Sansa, you don't have to leave."

"I just don't see what's in it for you, looking after me."

"What's in it for me?" he repeats, hurt, and she glances up to see him looking wounded. It's an unfamiliar expression, he's normally so good-natured with her. "I like to look after you, I care for you. This isn't tit-for-tat."

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just...embarrassed, I guess," she says, voice thick. "And I _really_ don't want to cry in front of you again."

"But you cry so prettily, darling," he teases and she rolls her eyes. "You've just had an operation, Sansa, you're full of drugs and you've gone through a shock. You can weep for the whole next week and I wouldn't judge you, I'd just bring you lots of tea to make sure you didn't dehydrate yourself."

"That's the sweetest thing you've ever said," she says, and he gives her a knowing look because they both know she's lying. He's always saying sweet things to her, caring for her. It's her own fault that she chafes against it, that she fears being vulnerable.

After she's eaten he settles himself down on the sofa with his laptop and soft music playing and she slinks into the room like a chastened cat, plonking herself down next to him and then inching closer, ducking under his arm as he lifts it without looking at her, a small smile on his face, and she rests her head on his chest and breathes in his familiar smell. And if she feels warm and tingly inside when he kisses her on the top of her head and strokes his hand down her arm, then so what.

 

**

 

Sansa is embarrassed after she's recovered from her hospital misadventure, but also softer and more open towards him. He knows she wants him just as he wants her, that she's aching to fully commit, but that her past griefs are still holding her back. It doesn't matter, there's nothing she could do to put him off from fighting for her in his own careful and deliberate way. Of always being there, of showing her he can be counted upon.

At least he's surer now that she would contact him when an emergency starts and not when she's already in an ambulance with an appendix that's threatening to explode. He can't remember being so terrified as he was when he got that text, there's been nothing he's cared for as much as her, ever. The pale imitation of the feelings he had for her mother come nowhere close to how he feels for Sansa.

And if he can be her father and lover both, then he would be happy to be that for her. He's never thought of himself as particularly nurturing but she brings it out in him, this need to provide for her, and comfort her; how he thinks of her all through the day – that she'd like the pastry he saw in the bakery window on his way to lunch, that she'd appreciate the talents of the piano player in the bar he goes to, that she would look perfect in every dress in the expensive boutique he enters while walking along the harbour. He is slowly, subtly, getting her to accept his gifts - books, fancy food, a scarf when she looks cold, sunglasses when she's squinting at the sun one day. He's working up to buying her nicer things – clothes, jewellery, lingerie – and she's got a birthday coming up soon that he's going to stick his neck out for.

She's a challenge, Sansa; prickly, wary; and he likes that, admires it even.

As spring arrives she seems to brighten even more, and agrees to almost all of his invitations, swanning into his house or the restaurant he's chosen or the cinema or the art gallery, wearing a series of tiny skirts and flirty dresses, almost preening under his appreciative gaze. If this is what she's like in spring, then he can't wait for summer. Normally he heads abroad with his long academic summers but if she's staying in King's Landing to write her masters dissertation then he'll stay here too and offer up his garden for picnics and sunbathing.

He's even met her friend Margaery, when he and Sansa were at the theatre seeing a production of one of the plays she had been studying and the other girl was in the theatre bar waiting for a friend. Sansa had been slightly flustered to introduce the two of them and then wriggled in her seat, obviously needing the bathroom but not wanting to leave them together.

"Go on with you," he had said. "I can handle Ms Tyrell. I won't say anything you don't want me to say."

Margaery had raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at that, and Sansa had sighed and hurried off.

"Well then, fire away," he had said, turning back to Margaery and crossing his ankle over his leg.

"I think you're good for her," she said.

"I think so too." Why is it that other people feel the need to state the obvious to him?

"Good," Margaery said, sipping at her elaborate cocktail. "She's skittish, Sansa, but she's opening up slowly."

"I'm in it for the longhaul." If Margaery knows Sansa that well then she's not going to report back what Petyr said. As if it's a surprise to anyone but Sansa, who is the champion of wilful ignorance, that he's totally locked-in.

"Good."

"Well that was easy," he drawls. "I was given to imagine that there was more threatening involved in these kinds of conversations."

"Sansa can handle herself. If you hurt her, she'll gut you," she says with a sweet smile, and then the girl in question reappears, her hair now pulled into a ponytail.

"Well, the bar's still standing," Sansa says. "We better go now, Margaery, but I'll see you soon," she adds, pulling Petyr up by his arm.

"It was nice to meet you," he smirks.

"Likewise," Margaery says, tilting her head.

 

A few weeks later, he and Sansa are in a bookshop – both of them seemingly pretending that Petyr isn't going to buy her a book, with one of the loyalty cards full of stamps that he secretly collects for just these moments and then tells Sansa he has filled up because he buys a lot of books for the department personally (a lie) – when someone mistakes them for father and daughter. Petyr is sure it's happened before, it's an easy mistake to make with the way they look, but no one's actually said it to their faces.

Sansa blushes red as Petyr corrects the bookseller, but she doesn't let go of his hand as they leave the shop. "How embarrassing," she keeps saying and he studies her carefully.

That night he's sitting on his bed with her in his lap, kissing her, his hands roaming her body.

"We can do any roleplay you like, you know," he says. "I can be anyone you want me to be."

"I know," she says, hiding her face in his shoulder. He feels so very fond of her, unbearably protective.

"We've been circling around it for a while, sweetheart," he says kindly, after a few moments of silence. He can feel her holding her breath. "You know I wouldn't judge you, anything you wanted, it's fantasy, it doesn't mean that it's real."

"I don't like the word," she mumbles, "the idea of calling you—I think it sounds creepy."

"Alright."

She resettles in his lap and he smooths a hand down her back. "You're a good girl, you know that, Sansa, a good daughter."

Her whole body shivers and she makes a little squeak, pressing her face further into neck. He's pleased to be right. He also feels a slight curl of possessive smugness directed towards Catelyn and Ned, but he'll never tell Sansa that – it's one of those dark, petty thoughts best left to oneself.

He kisses the top of her head. "The best daughter a father could have," he says. "You're so good for me, darling."

" _Fuck_ ," she whispers.

"Yes?" he checks.

"Uh-huh," she says, nodding her head and squeezing her legs around his hips.

"Good," he smiles. "Good girl."

 

She's shy with him the next morning and he finds it terribly endearing. But by lunchtime she's back to teasing him mercilessly.

"These are your _smart_ sandals," she repeats, holding the shoes up as she snoops through one of his wardrobes.

"That's what I said."

"How old do you have to be to have _smart_ sandals."

"This old, apparently," he drawls.

"Do you even wear swimming trunks, or just one of those Victorian all-in-one numbers."

"Actually, I swim naked," he says, and delights in the barest flush of pink across her cheeks at that image. "But I imagine you have quite the collection of tiny little bikinis. You should do a beachwear fashion show for me sometime."

"You'll have to take me on holiday to see me in a bikini."

"Done," he says, and then dips his head to look at his newspaper, trying to hide his smile.

"Really?" she asks.

"Of course."

She clambers into his lap and tugs the paper out of his hands because she thinks he's not paying attention to her. As if he could ever ignore her when they're in a room together. She is utterly distracting, all of the time.

"You'll take me on holiday?"

"Yes. Wherever you like, whenever it works for our schedules. Sansa," he says more seriously, putting his hands around her waist, "I'd take you anywhere, buy you anything you want." 

"Anything? Like a house?" she teases, tugging at one of the grey patches in his hair.

He shrugs his shoulders. "Yes, I'd buy you a house."

She leans back, studying him open-mouthed, and then stands up.

"You'd buy me a house?"

"Is there an echo in here?" he teases.

"How rich are you?"

"Very."

She looks around the room, her forehead frowning. "I didn't realise."

"Well it's not a statement I'm in the habit of making. Hello, nice to meet you, did you know that I'm rich."

"I just thought you had a decent mortgage."

"No, no mortgage. I have three other properties as well, two are rented out and the other one is a rather charming hacienda in Dorne."

"On an academic salary?"

"No, I made investments. I do have a PhD in economics."

"I'm just trying to absorb this, sorry."

"That's alright."

"And you weren't joking when you said you'd buy me a house."

"No."

"That's mad, Petyr. We're not even married."

"Would you like to be?"

She gapes at him, shakes her head, and leaves the room.

He sighs and stares at the ceiling.

But when he hears the sound of her putting her shoes on he goes to find her in the hall. "Sansa-" he says. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going out," she says, angrily tying her shoelaces.

"Will you look at me?"

"What?" she says, acting bored and sullen, her eyes belying her frantic state.

"You know I love you, that I care for you. Why is this coming as a surprise, is it just the money? I'm not going to force you to accept any gifts."

"I just," she says, tugging at a knot in her other shoelace, her arms jerking, before she pulls the whole thing off and throws it on the ground in front of her. She breathes heavily and closes her eyes. "I just thought this was casual, us two."

"It might have been at the very start, but it hasn't been casual for me since early on. Has it for you, really?"

"No," she says, her eyes still closed.

He crouches down next to her and strokes a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"Then that's OK, sweetheart," he murmurs and she turns and hugs him, climbing awkwardly into his lap again as he sits with his back to the wall.

"You surprised me," she says, clutching the back of his jumper.

"A good surprise, I hope."

"Yes." She pulls back and studies his face, drawing a fingertip across his forehead and down one of his cheeks, rubbing through his moustache.

He leans forward and kisses her, sucking her lips slowly, laving his tongue across hers to make her wriggle in his lap.

"You know, I got accepted onto the PhD programme here next year," she says nonsensically when he's made her lips plump with kissing, and then she adds, "Can I move in with you?"

"Yes," he says, smiling triumphantly, tilting her head to the side to bite her neck, to suck a large love mark to the surface.

"Good," she says, "I can't say goodbye to your amazing bathtub."

 

**

 

They fuck right there in the hallway, pushing the shoes aside, her on her hands and knees facing the hall mirror, him on his knees behind her staring at her reflection, his eyes barely blinking as he bucks his hips in-in-in and makes her sob and wail, telling how good she is, how perfectly she takes him. And then he helps her to his bed and brings her cream for her rug-burned knees, and tea and crumpets, and they cuddle up together and doze, sharing out bits of the weekend papers and using his phone to search for holiday villas.

Happiness, security, is difficult for Sansa to trust now, it makes her uncomfortable and a handful of conversations aren't going to be enough to overcome the trauma of losing her family, on some level she's still going to worry that everything is going to be snatched away. But it's a start. And she's not sure she could have chosen a partner more obsessively stalwart than Petyr.

When her contract is up on her studio she moves in with him, putting her things in one of the spare rooms he designates as hers, even though they both know she isn't actually going to spend any time in it.

And one day when she's snooping in his cupboards, she finds a pile of boxes and bags whose contents she can't quite understand and when she calls out and asks him what they are, he comes upstairs and joins her in front of the cupboard, looking very almost bashful.

"They're presents for you," he says. "Things I saw that made me think of you. I wasn't planning on giving it to you all at once like this, I was going to spread it out. What did you think it was?"

"I don't know," she shrugs her shoulders. "Things belonging to ex-girlfriends."

"In their original shopping bags?" he asks quizzically.

"Well forgive me if I didn't expect to find an Aladdin's cave just for me. Do you think I can take some of the things now, just the dresses, and the lingerie..." she trails off and looks up at him. He's smirking and looking very pleased with himself.

"Sansa, take it all. Who's here to judge," he says with a laugh.

"You're right," she says. "But don't think you can get away with buying me things all the time. I don't actually _need_ anything."

"Gifts aren't about need."

"You must be the worst person to buy gifts for, you have everything already."

He clucks his tongue. "An exaggeration, darling."

"Avocado cutter," she says, counting on her fingers, "pineapple corer, _bean slicer_."

"I'm sure you'll think of something. My birthday's not for a few weeks yet."

"A few weeks! _Petyr_. Maybe we could just do something from your list?" she adds, fingering the lapels of the tweed jacket she likes best on him.

"Oh?" he asks, and kisses her just next to her mouth, moustache tickling her skin. "What were you thinking?" he says, tugging her towards him, kissing her teasingly.

"We could do it in your car?" she murmurs.

"What a good girl you are to think of me like that," he says, eyes glinting, and slides to his knees, pushing her hips back against the wall and burrowing his head under her skirt as she rolls her head back and gasps at the ceiling.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, I'd love to know what people think!
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/171995009782/in-which-sansa-thinks-her-new-thing-with-petyr-is)


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